Archive - Sep 29, 2013

With a government's October 1 shut down - temporary of course - now seemingly inevitable, and more importantly with the peak debt ceiling negotiations due in just about a week after which point the Treasury will run out of money, many wonder what comes next. That this is happening just two short years after the dramatic August 2011 debt ceiling impasse, when the market tumbled 20% and likely slowed economic growth is still fresh in everyone's mind, is hardly helping matters. Add a potential political crisis in Greece and Italy, and suddenly a whole lot of unexpected variables have to be "priced in."

He really does...

Last Thursday when we reported the surreal sequence of investor disinformation events facilitated by both JCP's management team, CNBC and a conflicted "source", we said that "it was only a matter of time before lawyers started making phone calls, and before someone got implicated in what in retrospect can be construed as very serious, and costly, 10(b)-5 securities fraud." Sure enough, it took a little under 48 hours before the first (of many) lawyers smelled blood, and resulted in Shareholder Rights Law Firm Johnson & Weaver, LLP starting an investigation " if a securities violation was committed by J.C. Penney Company, Inc., when it made specific representations about the company's liquidity and the need to raise cash." The answer: yes. The only question is who is guilty, and how much the settlement will be for all those who lost cash on the second most active trading day of JCP stock in history (followed only by the next trading day in which the stock tumbled another 6% from the Goldman follow on offering price to a fresh 13 year low).